Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (340 mails)

["David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

peter nikolic wrote:
> On Saturday 18 April 2009, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:
>
> > ATI is part of AMD now, and point one they have claimed to "open" ATI
> > driver development (whatever that means), and point two SUSE has excellent
> > (in communication at least) connections to AMD.
> >
> > So just let's wait and hope, and later infringe SUSE if necessary.
> >
> >
> > Viele Grüße
> > Eberhard Mönkeberg (emoenke@xxxxxxx, em@xxxxxxx)
>
>
> And whilst we sit around waiting for some fictisus little ouik to get off 
> it's 
> butt and do something  we meanwhile have computers that are effectivley 
> crippled  because we chips from a pissant manafuacturer that could not give a 
> monkeys !  .
>
> Do i start shouting at'em or do i make it a front page press jobby .
>
>
> ATI are a bunch of idiots that are totally ignoring their paying customers 
> requests for support because they think they are superiour i may well start 
> laying into them i think  cus i am sick of this load of C******S  too much 
> pussy footing about  when we maybe need the sledge hammer approach . 
>
> As was said by John Bird   (collected broadcasts of Idi Amin) A bullet in di 
> head am always good for starters.
>
> Pete .
>  

        And... if that doesn't work, we can always start a whisper campaign 
about
AMD's possession of WMD's and see if that doesn't get the appropriate resources
brought to bare;-)

        I don't care what kind of company your are big --or-- small, you take 
care of
your customers. Especially if you are a major processor and graphics company in
a tight market. Nothing makes worse business sense than to dupe your customers
in with flashy marketing and great claims of speed only to take no action when
problems arise with the driver. Don't get me wrong, I know ATI is a windows
shop, but when you put out a driver and represent it will support card X, then
it better support card X or, from a corporate honesty standpoint, you should
amend your support representation or step up to the plate and fix the driver so
it supports card X.

        Nvidia has kicked the tar out of AMD in the past 12 months in the gpu 
market,
not only from a speed standpoint, but from a support standpoint as well. The
GeForce 295 is running circles around the competition.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-gtx,2270.html and the Byline
 for AMD's latest offering (the 4890) says it all. "ATI Radeon HD 4890: Playing
To Win Or Played Again?"
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4890,2262.html

        Think about it a little bit, "Played Again", just what do you think 
that is
intended to mean? It's not just me that feels cheated by the company.

        Bottom line, AMD/ATI customer support for it's Linux customers has got 
to
change or there will be no more Linux customers for AMD/ATI. If there is
something that Novell can do from it large FOSS customer status, then Novell
should step up to the plate for its users as well and figure out how to solve
this problem. It's not rocket science, it's a driver bug that should be fixed.
Both parties have a stake in getting it right. We know what wait and see will
accomplish, you just "wait and see..."

        I'm just glad their processor division fully and energetically supports 
its
Linux customers.

        It just seems like a really, really bad dream and I just hope ATI will 
step up
to the plate and give its Linux driver the attention it has badly needed since
October '08 so people stuck with ATI cards in their laptops are not left with
partially crippled hardware. My Toshiba 205D with radeon x1200 hardware has no
upgrade path to 11.1 or 11.2 because the ATI driver locks the system. While on
11.0 with the September '08 driver, it works great.

        There is a problem, that has been identified, and as mentioned before, 
ATI has
been made aware of it on 6 (SIX) occasions and provided with all logs, install
details, and config files; and so far all ATI has said in response is "kiss
off".[1] That's customer service for you.

[1] I could give the exact details of ATI response to my Linux driver feedback
cases, but that would just disclose the complete and utter incompetence of
AMD/ATI's outsourced tech support and would be far more maligning to AMD/ATI
than just the summary above. (Although, if you search the list archives you
will find the sad sorted details;-)

cc: atilinuxnovellbugs@xxxxxxx
(ATI See thread: Plans and Issues for ATI fglrx Driver for 11.2?;
opensuse-factory@xxxxxxxxxxxx for full details)


-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com
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